MGMAT CAT Quant Vs. MBA.com CAT Quant Vs. Real GMAT Quant

[geatkins]

Hey guys,

Can someone with more experience than I (which is not much) comment on the relatively difficulty between MGMAT CAT quant, GMATPrep CAT quant the the real GMAT CAT quant in terms of difficulty and score accuracy.

The reason I ask is that I have been very consistent across 4 GMATPrep CAT quant, but scored a little, but not significantly higher on the MGMAT CAT Quant. My overall score went from the 590 range on GMATPrep to 640 on MGMAT. I am terrible at math and my verbal was slightly lower on MGMAT. Plus, on one of the MGMAT quant questions I got the right answer (-x) but clicked and confirmed (+x) and I knew it the minute I clicked. Also, on another question I think the CAT answer was wrong (see my other post about that here possible-mistake-on-mgmat-cat-question-t10078.html)

If that's the case, my quant score should have been even higher on MGMAT than it was. Those two questions alone would have probably pushed my overall score on the MGMAT quant to the 650 or 660 range.

Thoughts or ideas between quant difficulty between the three tests?

Thanks in advance for any comparisons.

Glenn Atkins

[tim]

Hi Glenn,
You bring up several issues here; I’ll try to address each of them adequately..

First, to the difficulty of the questions and accuracy of scoring (which are two sides of the same issue of course), I believe MGMAT has calibrated our questions to be as close as possible to the difficulty of the GMAT, and on average you won’t find a real difference in the objective difficulty of the questions. Many students tell us that they find our questions either more or less difficult than the actual GMAT, but these observations tend to balance out so that it is still possible to conclude that on average our questions correspond quite well to GMAT questions in terms of difficulty. I have found however that most of the time when students mention a perceived difference to me it is because they have spent vastly more time preparing on one platform or another. For instance, students who study primarily by taking practice tests rather than working OG problems (worst idea ever by the way) often score higher on our CATs because they are more used to the MGMAT practice tests. When this is the case I encourage the student to spend more time on the OG problems..

In theory, there should be no difference at all between the GMAT and GMAT Prep, because all GMAT Prep questions are former GMAT questions..

Next, stop taking GMAT Prep tests. There aren’t enough questions in the software for you to be taking the test four times, and any further tests you take will only give you a distorted perception of how you are doing..

Finally, don’t expect that one or two questions will raise your score 10 or 20 points. In fact, it’s best not to try to predict how any set of questions will translate into an overall score change. Just focus on getting as good as you can at the problems and that will be much more effective for you..

[geatkins]

Tim,

Thanks for the insights. Oddly enough, I find the quant on MGMAT to be easier that the quant on GMATPrep. Maybe that's because I studied most of the quant books from MGMAT and used the OG for some practice problems as well.

In my practice CATS I score consistently lower on the quant from GMATPrep and find it much more difficult.

Glenn

[RonPurewal]

Tim,

Thanks for the insights. Oddly enough, I find the quant on MGMAT to be easier that the quant on GMATPrep. Maybe that's because I studied most of the quant books from MGMAT and used the OG for some practice problems as well.

In my practice CATS I score consistently lower on the quant from GMATPrep and find it much more difficult.

Glenn

hi --
here i'm most interested in the fact that your quantitative scores stayed consistent across 4 gmatprep exams.

gmatprep is only supposed to contain enough questions for two distinct exams; didn't you see a fair number of repeated questions?
if your score had changed drastically between the first two administrations and the last two, it would be more reasonable to have zero overlap between the quantitative sections -- but, if your score stayed roughly the same, we would expect that you would have seen at least a few of the same questions.
did you see any of the same questions?

in any case, when you go back and review the problems you missed, make sure that you consider all possible avenues of solution -- including "backup methods" such as VIC, plugging in numbers, etc.

good luck.